Whose task is it to govern and guide the affairs of the Church? According to the Belgic Confession in its original version the answer to that question is: the elders assisted by the deacons. After describing the “true” church in Article 29 this Confession, in its original version, goes on to say, in Article 30: “We believe that this true church ought to be governed in accordance with the polity which our Lord has taught us in his Word; that is, it shall have Ministers and Pastors for the preaching of the Word of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments, shall also have supervisors [the original French, from which we are translating, has urveillans] and deacons, to constitute the governing body [the French has senat]” and then it goes on to explain that by means of the three offices named “the true religion may be preserved and wicked people be corrected and held back, the poor and the afflicted helped and comforted according to their needs, that by these means all things may run right and in good order in the Church, when such personages are elected, faithful ones, and in line with the rule which St. Paul gave to Timothy.”
This Article 30 makes a clear-cut distinction between what is known in Presbyterian parlance as “teaching elder” (known as leeraar in the Dutch tradition) and “ruling elder” (known as ouderling in the Dutch tradition). What is even more noteworthy is that this Article 30 does not include the “teaching elder” in the “senat,” the governing body.
Although the Belgic Confession as printed in 1561 was in 1566 subjected to what has rightly been called “een duchtige revisie,” “a mighty revision,” the reading of 1561 was at this point allowed to stand (save for the insertion of the adverb “spiritually” before the word “corrected”). So things stood until just before the Great Synod, held at Dordrecht in 1618–19, for in 1610 a printing of the Confession came out, under the church’s supervision , in which the original (with its ascription of the ruling function to a senat consisting of elders and deacons) is repeated.
It was in the text allegedly approved at the Synod of Dordrecht that the “teaching elder” was given a hand in the governing of the church. This was done by adding the phrase “avec les Pasteurs” (to be translated with “along with the Pastors”) to the expression “to be the senat.” With that “avec les Pasteurs” inserted the distinction of “teaching elder” and “ruling elder” was blurred. Since that time the Preacher/Pastor is by definition a member of the senat; he is, moreover, by definition the chairman of the senat, and that not merely as order-keeper but (in practice at least) as direction–determiner. Moreover while the “ruling elder” takes a seat in the senat with the understanding that he will vacate it again, in a year or two, the “teaching elder” now functioning as a “ruling elder” is seated permanently, for as long as he does not accept a call to go elsewhere. All told, we have, during the years, moved quite a distance in a given direction, whether for good or for bad.
We come now to a second (but by no means unrelated) development. It is that although the Confession speaks of but three offices we have permitted a fourth kind of officer to come on the scene, that of a “teaching elder” who only teaches, one who does not by definition also preach, that of the “professor.” This new kind of officer enjoys a special status in that he is, by definition, a member of every eventual synodical gathering, and not just a member but a more than averagely prominent one. Unlike the “elder,” who gets to synod, maybe, once in a lifetime, these non-preaching “preaching elders” are expected to be on hand at every such gathering. Nor is that the extent of their preferment; they can count on being given an assignment on at least one Advisory Committee of such a synod, serving, as it were, as advisor to the advisors. This imbalance, this seat-of-prominence, assigned to a kind of’ “officer” unknown to the pertinent article in the Belgic Confession, needs to be given a second look, perhaps corrected.
As we ponder this possibility it is to be kept in mind that people whose sole task is to “teach” must be on guard constantly lest they become lopsidedly theoretical, have their “heads in the clouds,” as it has been put, live in an “ivory tower,” as it has likewise been put. Far be it from us to say, or even suggest, that such long-on-theory people arc a needless luxury—but it remains a fact that parish ministers, as well as the elders whom they were meant to assist, meet up constantly with life as it is lived. This implies that synods should address themselves primarily to the problems which elders and ministers encounter as they go about their assignment in this work-a-day world, that synods should only by way of exception concern themselves with refinement of theoretical truth. It is our conviction that if this provision were faith fully put in practice, the agenda of a prospective synod would be appreciably less voluminous.
Of this we may be sure: if those Reformed people who in 1563 were already signing their names to the Belgic Confession, as a Formula of Unity, were to return to the scene, they would be amazed to find a senat in which deacons are al most absent and preachers are at the steering wheel. They would arch their eyebrows at the sight of non-preaching “elders” sitting on more or Jess elevated seats, determining to a goodly extent how things go at the senat of senats, known to us as synodical gatherings.
Rev. Leonard Verduin is a retired Christian Reformed pastor living at Grand Rapids, Michigan (winters, Apache Junction, Arizona).